


Case Zero

by perfectlight



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Angst, BBC, Baskerville - Freeform, Childhood Memories, Death, Diary/Journal, End of the World, Gen, Illnesses, John Watson's Blog, Loss of Parent(s), M/M, Parentlock, Virus, epidemic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-13
Updated: 2013-10-13
Packaged: 2017-12-29 08:40:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1003321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perfectlight/pseuds/perfectlight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>PATIENT: Watson-Holmes, Hamish<br/>AGE: 10<br/>DIAGNOSIS: Virus-H, non-fatal [significant factor]<br/>GUARDIANS: Holmes, Sherlock [father] & Watson, John [father] - DECEASED<br/>NOTES: The patient is in a state of permanent contagion and will remain indefinitely in solitary confinement for safety and study. Do not enter the quarantined environment without protective equipment. Contact Dr Frankland to request blood or tissue samples or contact Dr Hooper to request the patient's personality & psychological evaluations.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Case Zero

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is a parentlock rewrite of the short story 'Patient Zero' by Tananarive Due, which can be found [here](http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/patient-zero/). Canon is bent slightly in that Dr Frankland is still alive (because really, how many evil virologists are there in _Sherlock_?) and Harriet Jones is Prime Minister. Any lines similar to the original story, and all credit to the story's concept, belong to Ms Due. Thanks to [AJ](http://archiveofourown.org/users/theyalwayssay) for the beta.

                    19 September

 

     Today they _finally_ brought in Daddy's book! Mary tapped on my glass a lot to wake me up, and at first I was annoyed (when they tap on my glass I feel like a goldfish) until I saw it was her tapping, and I saw what she had pressed up on the glass for me to see –  _The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes_ , and there was Daddy’s signature scrawled all messily across the front cover. 

 

_For you, love_ , Mary mouthed at me, because she couldn’t press my comm while she was holding the book and tapping, so she smiled at me like she was the one getting a present. I hardly believed they'd even found a copy. I got so excited that I nearly fell out of bed and got tangled in the duvet and said _thank you thank you_ over and over and ran at the glass and smacked my palms on it and made Mary laugh. Then Anderson, the janitor, who’s rude and stupid and still won’t let me call him by his first name, came by and pushed past Mary to switch on the intercom box outside of my door and said, ‘Calm down, you little freak, it's not like you haven't  _seen_ the bloody book before.'

 

     I suppose he thinks it’s silly cos I saw _loads_ of copies of Daddy’s book while they were still being published, and when I was littler I used to climb onto his lap as he was writing and he’d have to wrap his arms around me to poke more words on the keys the way he did. But it’s been ages since I really saw one of the books, or that silly photograph of Papa in the deer hat. I put the book under my pillow but tore out the dedication page ( _to my two geniuses, Hamish and Sherlock_ ) and stuck it on my wall with the map of the U.K. and anatomy poster and solar system poster. Because Papa always said the solar system was irrelevant I have the periodic table too, because Papa _loved_ the periodic table. I know the order of the planets and their order by size and age, and I know all the noble gases and metalloids and the funny _unun_ -elements they make in labs. But the dedication’s the best part of my wall. 

 

     I’d say it was the best thing I have but I’ve still got a recording from the time the Prime Minister rang me. I was just six, and my phone rang, and I picked it up and she said, ‘Hello, Mr Watson-Holmes, this is the Prime Minister,’ just like I used to see on the telly. My stomach went tingly because it was funny to hear the Prime Minister say my name, even if it’s only my last names. It was strange to hear the Prime Minister talking to me at all. Papa never liked government people because of Uncle Mycroft, but Daddy and I always thought she was brilliant. Even though I thought as hard as I could I couldn't think of anything to say to her at all. Then she asked me how I was feeling, and I said I was feeling quite well thank you ma'am. That made her laugh like I was joking, when I was just trying to be polite. Then her voice went quiet and serious and she said everyone was praying and thinking about me and that all the best doctors in the universe were being helped a lot by my blood and that I was a very brave little boy, and then she just hung up. I listen to that recording sometimes when things are too quiet, and I always wish I’d thought of something else to say. Papa always told me I had to _think_ , and I hadn’t. I used to imagine that Harriet Jones would ring me again, but it only happened once, in the beginning, and that was that.

 

      Then Mary got on her hazmat suit and gave me the book. I started reading through all the old stories while Mary ran some tests and I asked her if Dr Frankland was ever going to get someone to mend my telly. It plays films but it doesn't do TV stations anymore, and I want to watch BBC and deduce the people on it. But Mary sighed and said that BBC doesn't run anymore, which was a lie and I got upset because I hate it when they lie. I can almost always tell and they think I can. Except then Mary said that the network administration people and some ministers met up and decided not to run BBC anymore, because of some things about power grids and signals that Mary didn’t understand well enough to explain, and maybe it would come back but she wasn’t sure, because really nobody but me was thinking about BBC any longer. When she said that it almost ruined the book, because it made me feel like the dedication was lying too, because Daddy couldn’t mean it anymore because he wasn’t alive anymore, was he? But then Mary smiled at me and put on what Sally sometimes calls her ‘angel face’ to tease, and she said the BBC was probably going to put programmes up again when things settled down, because they wanted clever kids like me to be able to watch. Then I felt better.

 

   I forgot to say that this is a journal. I guess it's obvious on account of I'm writing what's happening to me, but I wanted to say so just in case. Daddy's blog was obviously a blog but he still put 'the personal blog of Dr John H Watson' (the H is for his middle name, which is my name, which is Hamish) at the top. So saying that this is a journal for my thoughts is like that. The book itself is from Miss Hooper for a present. She's my tutor. She used to read Daddy's blog and said I ought to start writing down my thoughts and memories the way Daddy did, because writing can 'help with things.' I said I hadn't any crimes to write about, and she said that was silly because I had plenty of thoughts I could write about anyhow. That's her favourite word,  _silly_.   
  
  
    When she gave me the book Miss Hooper told me to say in it I've turned ten today, which is why she gave me a present, obviously. If I were in proper school I'd probably be year five, except I asked Miss Hooper what year I'd be and she said she honestly wasn't sure. She said she can’t fit me into a box that way, because I’m very smart, like Papa. So instead of school I have lessons with Miss Hooper every day except not weekends, and she almost never tries to teach me something boring, which Papa said they did in proper school. Miss Hooper is my best friend, but I don’t call her by her first name, which is Molly, because she’s also my teacher so I'm polite to her. She is very nice and has long brown hair and a cat named Toby and used to cut up bodies for a job. She wears knit jumpers like Daddy did only they look pretty on her and on Daddy they just looked silly. Her jumpers are frayed and ragged on the hems now, though. I don't know why she hasn't gotten any new ones.  
 

      It’s so funny reading Daddy’s old cases, before I was born and even before Papa had to go away for a few years. Daddy wrote down one silly case about geeks and superheroes that I figured out before the end, which I don’t always do, because Papa was nearly always cleverer than me. And there was even a scary case about a big dog and a frightened man where Daddy and Papa went on holiday to the same place I’m in now.

 

     Those are my thoughts. 

 

 

                    20 September

 

     There was something I needed to ask today, with the awful itching sort of needing that makes me jumpy and nervous all day. It’s a Friday, so I already didn't feel well cos Mary wasn’t here, and the other nurse, Sally, isn’t quite as nice as Mary is. So I had to wait for Miss Hooper to come in. She always arrives at half one.

 

    I went up to her and I said all in one breath, ‘One time Daddy said that sometimes in hospital they give the dying children one last wish for something special, and I know I"m still sick, and Dr Frankland asked me what one thing I wanted mot of all for my birthday and I said a copy of Daddy's book that Daddy had signed – and he got one for me yesterday even though he said it'd be awfully hard to find one – so does that mean I'm dying and this was my wish?'   I was speaking much too fast, because sometimes I do that when I’m nervous.

      Usually when I ask big questions like that one Miss Hooper just smiles and says I’m being silly, but this time when she smiled she put her hand on top of my head, like she does when she wants me to feel better. People always used to ruffle my hair before I got ill, because there's loads of it and it's curly like Papa's. Now everyone around me has to wear a suit so they can't really ruffle it, but having a hand on my head is the next best thing and Miss Hooper knows this because she's my best friend, like I wrote yesterday.   
  
  
     'Listen to me, Ham,' she said, because that's something she calls me when I do too much thinking, on account of I used to not think my name should be spelled  _Hamish_ because it looks like ham-ish, not  _Hay-mish_ , and Daddy said I was overthinking it and Papa said English was a stupid language anyway. I guess she started calling me Ham because Daddy sometimes did. 'You're many things, but you're not dying. I  _wish_ everyone could be as healthy as you are. The world'd be a happier place.'

  
     I didn’t feel very happy right then, but I suppose I felt healthy. And a little nervous, but I don't know why, which is another thing to be nervous about.

 

      The people here are always waiting for something, but I’ve never been able to deduce what for. Before today I thought they were probably waiting for me to die. But I trust Miss Hooper (she's also a rubbish liar, and that’s one reason why I like her so much). When I ask her questions she doesn't want to answer me, she'll bite her lip and sigh and say 'Please, love, let's not,' because she's the only person left who'd rather not tell me anything than tell me a lie.   
  


 

                    5 October

 

      My lights kept flickering on and off today. At first it was fun, like in a horror film, and then it was annoying cos the lights didn't flicker in any pattern – I tried to figure out what they would be spelling in Morse code but they didn't really spell anything at all. It was awfully cold too. I wore my trousers and three socks on each foot and my old shirt with the thumb holes that's a bit small in my armpits now and one of Daddy's jumpers that's ugly but also very cosy. Miss Hooper couldn't do lessons properly because the lights weren't working. When I asked her what went wrong with them she said the emergency generator was being a prat. I said that generators couldn't be prats because they weren't people, which didn't make her laugh like I meant it to do. Then I asked what the emergency was and she said 'Just what it always is.' I wasn't certain what to deduce from that. Papa would know. But then I came up with a hypothesis and tested it by asking if the emergency generator was why Dr Frankland wouldn't have my telly mended, on account of televisions needing a lot of power for the picture and the signal and everything else. Miss Hooper said that was about it, which probably means I'm right, and that everyone is conserving energy (I pictured Mrs Hudson with the jam she put into jars and kept in the attic, only we're saving energy to use it, I think, and no one ever ate Mrs Hudson's jam), and I ought to help however I can.   
  


      It helped me understand, which is good, but I still wish I could watch BBC. And my science videos and my films. When I came here I used to watch the old mystery programmes like I would watch with Daddy, who liked them, and Papa, who liked to make fun of them. They helped me pretend I wasn't so lonely, and now I can't, and sometimes it feels like there's nothing to do without my films except think, but there's only so much space in my head. I hate being bored. Sometimes I try to play the films over again in my head, but I'm forgetting bits by now and I don't like forgetting things. But I have to for now, because there's not much energy and until there's a bit more stored up I can't have my telly back.

 

 

                  15 October

 

      I had no lights for ages today so I couldn't write until now. I'm tired too so I don't think I'll write much anyway. We're still conserving energy, so no television, but my lessons have been interesting to make up for it. It's funny about Miss Hooper because she's loads smarter than she lets you know. Sometimes she acts silly and giggly but then I'll ask her about decomposition or why cold bodies don't get smelly as fast as hot ones or where people who have no family to do funerals get buried, or anything at all to do with  _pathology_ (that's the sort of doctor she was) and she won't stop talking for  _ages_. She'll use long words and chemical names and talk about poisons and stab wounds and bones and decaying tissue. It's fun.

 

      Papa used to get excited that way about things he knew loads about. I understood even less of what he’d say than I understand what Miss Hooper says now, but it makes me feel like I’m listening to him, a little bit. I felt bad today because I can’t remember when his and Daddy’s anniversary was, and I know I should. 

 

 

                    22 October

 

      Yesterday I made Mary cry. It wasn't on purpose! It was an accident and Dr Frankland says he knows so but I still feel awful. I couldn't stop crying for a long time either.

 

      What happened was that I had been talking to her this morning, and Mary was listening and making _mmhmm_ noises but not talking back because she was taking blood from my arm like she always does. She gets very focused when she does that, and her tongue pokes out from her mouth. I was telling her about how me and my papa used to watch crap telly late at night and make fun of the actors until Daddy made us both go to bed, which I probably thought of cos I was tired and I knew getting blood taken out of me would make me more tired and I felt like the whole day would be boring and sad, and then suddenly Mary started crying so hard I thought she was screaming.

 

      She dropped the needle on the floor and grabbed onto her wrist like it was broken and she even started swearing. I knew it was something bad then, very bad, because nobody swears around me. I don't know why not. Mary said  _bloody hell bloody hell bloody hell_ , over and over, crying inside her hazmat mask. I was scared and tried to ask her what was wrong and when I reached for her arm she shoved me away like she wanted me to fall down. Then she ran to my door and hit the number code in too fast and pulled on the doorknob but it wouldn't open. She pulled and pulled and something in her arm went snap and she had to do the code three times. And she kept crying, this horrible gasping sort of crying. I’d never seen her cry before.

 

      I didn’t know what had happened to Mary to scare her so much and nobody told me anything, not for so long. I pushed my finger hard on the buzzer sixteen times but everybody ignored me. It was like when I first came here, which was a bad memory, when I was little and always hitting the buzzer till my fingers hurt and I cried adn cried and nobody would come for ages and ages. And whenever they did they were cross and unhappy, like I'd done something wrong.

 

      So I had to wait for Miss Hooper, and when she came I knew from her face she didn't know about Mary, so I had to tell her about the whole thing. I ought to have known before that Miss Hooper wouldn't have heard about it, because she comes from the outside where she still lives. Miss Hooper promised to find out anything she could for me. Then she made me recite all the lobes of the brain and the bones of the body which was silly because I already knew them both by heart. But I didn't think about Mary while I did.

 

      Miss Hooper left after my lessons, but she rang me on my phone an hour later, just as she’d promised. She always keeps her promises. My phone is made so people outside can ring me, but I can’t call anybody at all on the inside or outside. I don't think that's very fair of them but I don't think they'll change the phone. It hardly ever rings anymore. But when it did I almost couldn’t pick it up, I was so frightened of what Miss Hooper would tell me.

 

     She said a lot of things I knew already she would say like how I mustn’t worry and it wasn’t my fault and everything would be all right and then she told me Mary had pricked herself. ‘The needle point when through her hazmat suit,' Miss Hooper said. Voices always sound funny on the phone, all tinny and thin, and a different sort of tinny and thin than the kind I hear through my intercom or the microphones on the hazmat suits. It made me remember that I haven't heard a voice, a _proper_ voice not through a speaker or a mask or a phone, since I came here when I was little. ‘She told Dr Frankland there was – what was it – a sudden movement.’

      I tried hard to remember, who had made the sudden movement? Had it been Mary or had it been me? I couldn't remember. I hated it.

 

      ‘Is she all right now?’ I asked. I thought maybe Miss Hooper would be angry with me, because she has told me many times that I have got be careful. Maybe I hadn’t been careful when Mary was here. I should have done.

 

      ‘We’ll see, love,’ Miss Hooper told me, which means no, even when it's Miss Hooper saying it.

 

      ‘She's going to be ill, isn't she.'

 

      ‘Yes,' said Miss Hooper, and her voice sounded like  _I'm sorry_ but she also didn't hesitate before she told me, because she doesn't lie. 'They think she will, sweetheart.'

 

      Then I didn’t want her to answer any more questions. I always want people tell me the truth, but it always makes me feel guilty, too. Even when I was little, when Daddy or Papa got upset, I always felt awful when I found out why, even if it hadn’t a thing to do with me, even if it was something about a case or the Met or the bad hospital Daddy didn’t like. And I felt especially upset when it was something about me.

 

      I wanted to tell Miss Hooper I was sorry, but somehow I couldn’t make my mouth open. And being sorry wouldn’t make Mary better. Being sorry didn't do anything at all.

 

      Miss Hooper was almost whispering. She sounded like she was trying not to cry. ‘It isn’t your fault, Ham.’

 

      I started sobbing the way I did when I was little. I couldn’t help it. 

 

      ‘Mary knew the risks when she came here,’ Miss Hooper told me, but I think she was telling herself just as much. 'She chose this, because she cared about helping people, and about you.'

 

      But that didn’t make anything better, because I was remembering how Mary’s face looked so scared and pale inside of her mask, and how she shoved me away. Mary had been here almost since the beginning, even before Miss Hooper came. Mary used to smile at me when nobody else would. She would put an extra biscuit in my meal when I'd had a lonely day, and she told Anderson off when he was rude to me, and sometimes when she had a night shift and she thought I was asleep, I could hear her singing in the corridor. She had a low thrumming voice, and it always helped me sleep without nightmares, even when the nights were cold and bad and I felt scared.  
  
  
    I only realised then that Mary probably had known I couldn't sleep, all those nights, and would sing on purpose for me. I didn't realise it until then and that meant I had never told Mary that I heard her or even thank you.

 

      I was crying so much I couldn’t even write down my thoughts like Miss Hooper said I should. Not until today.

 

 

                      4 November

 

      A long time ago, when I was first brought here and my telly still played programmes from outside, I saw my year one picture they had taken at school on the screen. I had always hated that picture because Daddy had let Mrs Hudson put greasy stuff in my hair to make it lie flat and not be curly and instead it made me look silly. And then one day I was here and I turned on my telly to stop being bored and there was my face and my hair from before, on the news!

 

     The man on the programme said the names of everyone in my family and even had them written out on the screen, and he talked about Papa and Daddy’s book for a bit. Then he called me Case Zero. He said it like he thought it was an awfully clever name, and he said I was the first person to be ill. But that was _wrong_. My papa was sick before I was. I  _told_ them so, loads of times, but no one ever listened. Papa got ill on a case in Cardiff. He travelled sometimes, because he was a detective and sometimes interesting cases were far from home, and when I was older my daddy went with him and I'd stay with Mrs Hudson. Only Papa went alone on the Cardiff case and he came home too early. We hadn’t been expecting him, because he almost never comes home before he’s finished a case. It was nearly my birthday. Papa said Uncle Mycroft had sent him home because loads of people in Cardiff were getting ill. Some had even died. But there were doctors in Cardiff who had looked at Papa and said he was fine, and then Uncle sent him home. Papa was so frustrated. He sulked for days and even got Daddy's gun to shoot at the wall but Daddy wouldn't let him. Papa hated leaving cases unfinished.

 

      But I wish he'd never even taken the stupid case at all because he  _wasn't_ fine. After two days his eyes got red and he started coughing, this awful deep wet cough that hurt his chest. Then I did too. Then Mrs Hudson and then Daddy.

 

      When the man on the telly showed my photograph and called me Case Zero and said I was the first one who was ill, that was when I first knew they were all telling lies. They didn't even try to find out what was true. Some people in Cardiff got first, and then gave it to my papa, and my papa gave it to me and our landlady and my daddy.

 

      But one thing the programme man said was right. I was the only one who got well again. I think I'm the only one ever.

 

      My aunt Harry came to stay with me at the lab at first, but she wasn’t here very long, because her eyes had already gone red. She tried to tell me it was from crying but I knew it wasn't. She came to help take care of me after Daddy died too, but probably she shouldn’t have done that. Before they died she had moved outside of London, and I think she wouldn't have gotten ill if she hadn't come back to be with me. But even Uncle Mycroft didn't know what was wrong then, so nobody could warn her about what would happen if she was too close to me. Sometimes I dream that I'm in the flat and I'm trying to call Aunt Harry on my phone from here, to tell her to please please don't come. But I'm coughing that cough so much that the words don't come out, just blood from my throat, and then I remember the phone doesn't work and I wake up.

 

      After my Aunt Harry died, I was the only person left in my whole family.

 

      I got upset when I saw the news programme. I didn’t like hearing people talk about my family like that, because they never even knew us and they were saying things that were _wrong_. Even though sometimes I would hear people talking about Papa and Daddy and the book, this was different. And I thought maybe the man on the telly was right, and maybe it was all my fault. I screamed and cried and broke things. They even called in Miss Hooper to try to calm me down but I didn’t listen to her at all. I just cried.

 

     After that Dr Frankland had them fix my telly so I couldn’t see the news any longer or programmes from the outside, just science videos and my films. The only good thing was, that was when the Prime Minister called me. I think she watched the same programme as I did and felt sorry when she saw what happened to my family. 

 

      Sometimes I ask Dr Frankland if they still talk about my family on the news, but he only shrugs and won’t look at me. Dr Frankland doesn’t say yes or no much when I ask him a question. He's a virus doctor so I know he's awfully busy, but I still wish he would answer me more. Except it doesn't matter, because the people on the telly probably stopped showing my photograph when they stopped showing the BBC. I was so little when my family got sick. I've been here four years now.

 

 

                   6 November

 

      I hadn’t had a proper sit-down, which is what Daddy would’ve called it, to read _The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes_ in ages. Usually I just pick it up and find one of my favourite old cases that Daddy told me stories about to read when I’m bored. But I felt sad about Mary again today so I went under my bed, which is where I go to hide, with the book to read the whole thing through. I found some scarier cases Daddy hadn’t told me about, and some sad ones, and then I found some about my mum. 

 

       Daddy and Papa didn’t really talk about her much so I mostly only knew her name from Uncle Mycroft. I wasn’t ever that bothered about her, but in the cases she was in Daddy said a lot of things I hadn’t known, about text messages and witness protection and a power station. I didn’t know that she’d pretended to be dead for a while. At first it made me wonder if she wasn’t really dead now but Daddy always said she was and I could tell when he lied. And then there were sad things again about when Papa got hurt at the bad hospital but then it was cases as usual and then things about me, which made me feel funny to read, sort of tingly, like I was hearing my own self with Daddy’s ears on. Daddy put in so many embarrassing things about me, like how I used to gnaw on the end of Papa’s magnifying glass and how when I was younger I couldn’t get to sleep without having the skull on my nightstand. I was silly then. I don’t even know where the skull is, now. Maybe they buried it with the rest of the body. 

 

      Anyway, it’s a weekend so I haven’t got any Miss Hooper lessons. Sally came in to give me my food and she didn’t talk to me. She was in some of Daddy’s cases too, with Anderson. I guess maybe Uncle Mycroft made them come here to take care of me, because they knew about Papa and who he was. I don’t know. I don’t like not knowing things. 

 

      Mary isn’t back yet. I forgot to write that.

 

 

                     7 November

 

      I’ve read all of _The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes_ , and I’ve been looking at Daddy’s dedication, and now I’ve been staring for nearly a quarter hour, and I think maybe the handwriting on it isn’t Daddy’s. I might be remembering wrong, but it just doesn’t seem _right_. It doesn’t look the way it used to – it’s too messy, a bit too loopy, like maybe somebody was trying hard to make a scrawly Daddy signature.   
  
  
     The _i_ ’s are a little like Dr Frankland’s, with a slash for a dot. But I’m afraid to ask anyone about that.

 

      Yesterday the lights in my room were off for a whole day. And it was cold, too. I think if I had been able to see it my breath would have been fogging.

 

 

                     11 November

 

      Miss Hooper is teaching me a little bit about medicine because she knows Daddy was a doctor like her. I told her that I think I want to be a doctor too, when I’m grown, and maybe I’ll be a detective on the side, and she said she thinks it’s a lovely idea because people will always need someone to deduce what’s wrong and make them better. She says I’ll be in a good way to help people, and I asked if it’s because I have been here so long, and she told me yes.

      The first things she taught me about were diseases. She says in the old days, before even Dr Frankland and Uncle Mycroft and Fredrick Sanger were born, diseases like typhoid used to kill loads of people because conditions were unsanitary and drinking water was dirty, but then people got cleverer and doctors found medicine to cure it, so diseases don’t kill people quite as much anymore. Doctors are always trying to be smarter than diseases, Miss Hooper says.

 

       But sometimes they can’t, because there are new diseases. Or maybe not new diseases, but old diseases that were hiding for ages and ages until somebody brought them out into the open. I asked Miss Hooper what sort of person would bring out a disease to hurt people with and her face went sort of funny and closed, and she said it would probably be a very mean man who wanted lots of people to get hurt. She said it like she knew who it was, and she said it was a man, which I hadn’t done. I wanted to ask more about it but Miss Hooper went right on talking about doctors and diseases. She said medicine is hard because doctors will find cures for one disease just as another one pops up. 

 

        My disease has got a long name that I can’t remember how to spell properly but mostly people here call it Virus-H.

 

        It’s sort of named after me. That’s what Dr Frankland said. But I don’t like that at all.

       Miss Hooper told me that after Papa came home, the virus got into my body and attacked me like it did everyone else. I was awfully sick for a long time. I don't like remembering it, because it hurt and I thought I was dying. Then I thought I was getting better, because I stopped feeling ill. But the virus was already inside Daddy and Papa and Mrs Hudson and even our doctor from before, Dr Sawyer, and Miss Hooper says that the virus is very aggressive, which means doctors don’t know how to kill it.

 

      So everyone in my room has to wear yellow plastic suits and airtight masks when they’re in my room because Virus-H is still in the air, and it’s in my blood, and it’s on my duvet and on the spit that gets into my cups when I drink and it’s on my spoons and plates when I’m through with eating. They use hazmat suits and that means everything I touch is hazardous material, even me.

 

      Miss Hooper says Virus-H is extra special in my body, because even though I’m no longer ill, except for when I feel as though I’ve got a temperature and sometimes have to lie down, the virus won’t go away. Miss Hooper said Dr Frankland doesn’t know anybody else who’s gotten well except for me. Miss Hooper says there were rumours, right at the beginning, but that I’m the only one they know of for sure who’s the way I am. I'm the only one left.

 

       She said that’s why I’m here. But I already knew that bit. When I was small Dr Frankland told me about antibodies and bits in my blood, and he said the reason he and Sally and Mary and all the other doctors take loads of blood from me all the time until they make purple bruises on my arms and I feel dizzy and ill, is so they can try to help other people get well like I am, too. I don't know if it's worked. They never tell me.

 

       I have had nearly ten surgeries since I have been here. I think they even took parts out of me, but I’m not sure, because nobody will say so. I look the same outwards, but inwards I feel different. I had surgery on my belly a year ago, and sometimes when I climb my play rope, the one that hangs from the ceiling in my room, I feel like it hasn’t healed properly, like I’m still cut open. Miss Hooper always tells me it’s in my mind and not to worry – it's what Papa would say when Daddy's leg hurt, that it was _psychosomatic_. But it hurts a _lot_. I don’t hate anything as much as I hate operations. I think the reason there were only rumours about other sick people who got well is cos they cut those people up until they died. Sometimes I'm scared they'll do that to me, maybe when I'm asleep. It's been a year now since I had any operations, because I keep telling Dr Frankland that they can have as much blood as I want (my body makes more even if it takes a while) even if it makes me feel horrid, but please  _please_ I don't want any more operations. 

 

       Dr Frankland said nobody in the world is better than I am to make people better, that they just need to figure out how. Miss Hooper says the same thing, and I trust her. That makes me feel a tiny bit better about Virus-H.

 

       I was glad that Miss Hooper told me all about diseases, because I don’t want her to treat me as though I’m a baby like the others do. That’s what I always tell her. I _like_ to know things. I like thinking.

 

       I didn’t even cry when she told me Mary had died. I knew Mary would do, really, ever since I found out she hurt herself with something that had touched me. I just didn't want to know it. Maybe I’m growing out of my crying now, like I grew out of the trainers they used to bring me, and now I just wear socks.   
  
  
      Besides, I realised long ago that nobody gets better again once they’ve gotten sick.  Nobody except for me.

 

 

                     13 November

 

       Today’s a Friday the thirteenth. Those were always funny days because people got scared of them and then did silly things, which meant Papa got loads of cases and got frustrated at how stupid everyone was. But when Papa said _everyone_ he didn’t actually mean everyone. He mostly meant the sort of boring people we’d see at the shops or on the telly or sometimes at the Met, the sort of people who didn’t know how to think properly and didn’t care to try. I know that because even though Daddy didn’t think the way Papa had done Papa still loved Daddy more than almost everything. Except maybe for me. I think Papa almost loved me more than he loved Daddy, which made me feel a little bit guilty, because it wasn’t Daddy’s fault that his brain didn’t work like my brain and Papa’s brain did. Daddy was special in a different way than I am. Maybe in a better way, because Daddy never thought too much about things like I sometimes do. Maybe I’m thinking too much about things now. Papa and Daddy can’t love anyone anymore, after all.

 

      I remember one Friday the thirteenth when there was a case with a man whose wife cut him up and put his limbs all over their garden, just like she was planting them. Papa took me with him because he got called in when we were in a cab together coming home from my school. They all thought Papa was mad because I was still so little and the case had lots of blood, but Papa told them they were stupid and then taught me all about blood viscosity and decomposition and why bodies rot more when they’re in dirt (on account of proximity to bacteria) and it was brilliant. Daddy got sort of angry about it but it was still _brilliant_.

 

      Miss Hooper told me not to think about this but sometimes I do anyway. I don’t know where Papa and Daddy’s bodies are. They brought me here so soon after they died. Maybe Uncle Mycroft buried them somewhere, or maybe they’re just with all the other bodies that got put in the morgue when people started getting ill with Virus-H. If they’re under the ground, then their skin and muscles and organs will have rotted away much more quickly because there are lots of organisms that eat bodies in the dirt. But if they’re in a morgue then they’re just frozen with a load of other people who didn’t know them either. Maybe boring people who never thought properly. Maybe.

 

      I don’t want to think about this any longer. But it’s hard to stop. There’s nobody to solve the silly cases that come on Friday the thirteenth without Papa. And there’s nobody to write about them without Daddy. But I’m still not crying. I promise I’m not.

 

 

                    18 November

 

      Today during lessons I asked Miss Hooper how many people have Virus-H. ‘I don’t know, Ham,’ she said. I think she didn’t want to talk about disease any longer.

 

      ‘Estimate,’ I said. 

 

     Miss Hooper thought for a long while. I could almost see her brain working. Then she opened my notepad and started drawing lines and boxes all across a paper. Her hair spilled down over her face behind the airtight mask, so I couldn’t see her properly. The picture looked like the tiny brown lines all over an oak tree leaf. Once when we were on holiday in Sussex, I saw a live oak that was more than one hundred years old. Daddy told me trees can sometimes live even longer than people can. And Daddy was right, because I’m sure the tree is still standing by that cottage with the beehives, even though my whole family is gone.

 

     ‘It’s like this, Hamish,’ Miss Hooper said then, showing me with her biro tip how one line branched down to the next. ‘People are giving it to each other. Passing it along. Usually they don’t know they’re ill for about two weeks, and by then they’ve passed it on to other people. By now it’s already been in the open four years. So the same thing that happened to your family is happening to a lot of families.'

 

      ‘How many families?’ I asked. I know there are seven billion people in the world – or at least when I came here there were that many – so I made my own estimate. ‘Two billion?’

 

      Miss Hooper shrugged just like Dr Frankland did. It might have meant no, but it also might have meant yes.

 

     I couldn’t imagine two billion families (Papa said nobody could imagine billions, or even millions, and that even he couldn’t, and nobody’s smarter than Papa was), so I asked Miss Hooper if it happened to her family too, if maybe she had been married or had kids and they were ill with my virus. But she said no, she was never married, only dated a few times. She was telling the truth. And anyway, Miss Hooper doesn’t look that old. She won’t tell me what age she is, but she’s in her twenties, I think, or maybe early thirties, but it’s harder to tell with people who are pretty like her. Papa always looked younger than he was because he was beautiful, Daddy said so. 

 

     Miss Hooper smiled at me past her plastic mask, but her eyes weren’t happy. ‘My mum was in London, too, and she got it right off. Dad had already passed away. My brother and his family came to London for Mum's body, but then they got it too. I was away for a conference when it happened. That’s why I’m still here.’

 

     Miss Hooper had never told me that before.

 

     My family lived in London too. We had a flat, and my daddy sometimes said it was too small when I started getting bigger, even though we had enough bedrooms because Daddy and Papa shared one, obviously. But Papa loved where we lived because it had everything he liked in it: Daddy and me and the skull and Mrs Hudson and his chemistry experiments and sock index and case files and internet connection and not Uncle Mycroft. There was even a big smiling face painted on one wall that Papa shot all over when he was bored. (He only ever let me shoot it once when I’d had an awful day at school, because I think Papa knew Daddy wouldn’t have liked me using a gun in the flat, and Papa never forgot what Daddy didn’t like even when he was terribly bored.) All sorts of things made it home and that’s why Papa really loved it, I think because I have a sock index and experiments and people I like here but it isn’t home at all. 

 

      Papa wouldn’t like where I am, because it’s very bare and very boring and I can’t leave to go on cases like he would. But maybe Daddy would have done, because I have loads of room and things to climb on, like my rope. Back in our flat I used to walk all over furniture the way Papa would and Daddy said we’d make the whole place fall to pieces. I wondered if Miss Hooper’s parents knew someone in Cardiff too, but probably not. Probably they got Virus-H from my papa and my daddy and me.

 

     ‘Miss Hooper,’ I said very seriously, ‘I think you should move inside like Dr Frankland and everybody else.’ It was something I’d been thinking about for quite a long while, because I wanted Miss Hooper to never ever get Virus-H and Dr Frankland always said it was very sterile in here and very safe, because it’s all surrounded by moors. Also I wanted her near me, but that was a bit selfish, so I didn’t say that part.

 

     ‘Oh, Ham,’ said Miss Hooper, with a lightness in her voice that meant she was trying very hard to be cheerful. ‘If I was that worried about the virus, why would I be here teaching you? Does that make sense?'

 

     I said I guessed it did. Then Miss Hooper said she had asked to be my teacher, which I hadn’t known. Nobody had sent her or made her come, not even Uncle Mycroft’s people. She had wanted to come. 

 

      ‘Only to teach me?’ I asked her, and I was watching very hard to tell whether she was lying.

 

      ‘Yes, Hamish,’ Miss Hooper said. ‘I used to know your dads, a long time ago. I think this is something they would have wanted me to do.’

 

      I hadn’t known that at all. There were two billion questions I wanted to ask, but Miss Hooper kept talking and I wasn’t supposed to interrupt because that was rude. She said she had been the sort of doctor that cuts up dead people, which I had known. She said she had known Dr Frankland from the hospital they both worked at, the hospital Daddy didn’t like very much. And Dr Frankland knew Miss Hooper, so that was why he let her come teach me. ‘You’re such a clever boy, Hamish. And you need to know how to face life outside,’ she told me.  
  
  
    I asked Miss Hooper why I hadn't known her when I was little, if she knew my parents. Miss Hooper smiled, sort of sadly, and said that she had known me when I was very young, but that Daddy had never really forgiven her for something and that after awhile she and my parents just drifted apart. The strange part about that was Daddy not forgiving her, because Daddy always forgave me and even Papa, who did loads of things he wasn't supposed to, like teach me about pressure points and give me the answers to my homework so I could have it done and help him with a case or experiment. Then I deduced that Miss Hooper must have done something Daddy really didn't like, and that she had worked at the bad hospital before, and that maybe she had helped Papa go away, which he did for three whole years when I wasn't born yet.  
  
  
    I almost asked Miss Hooper if I was right, but then I looked at her face and I knew she didn't want to talk about it. So I asked her what was the most important thing to know about life outside and she laughed and said that I should always remember to look both ways before crossing the street.  
  
       
    Miss Hooper is funny, which is something I forget sometimes. She's also funny-odd, which is good, because it means that some days  she’ll just up and quit the regular lessons about prime ministers and pathogens and teach me things like what a brain does while a person sleeps and how to sew and what plants will kill you if you eat from them. She said she’s still got a little garden where she lives on the outside with her cat, close to where I am. I like that she’s nearby but I still wish she lived inside. But she said one of the reasons she won’t move inside is because she loves her garden and her cat, and she doesn’t want to leave them.

  
     That makes sense but I loved my flat and my skull and my daddy and my papa and they still made me leave them. Except it was one of the worst things in the world when they did, and I don't want Miss Hooper to be as sad as I was, when I came to live here.  
  
  
      She brings things in for me to learn about and study sometimes, but they're mostly plants and those aren't interesting.  There was cassava, which looked like a twisted branch to me, and she said it’s okay to eat, except first I’d have to boil it because it’s got poison in its roots and in its leaves. The poison was more interesting than the plant was. She told me to always boil water before I drink it, to never drink water that was standing still, and that expiration dates on canned foods were mostly ignorable because there were enough preservatives inside to last 'through, well, an apocalypse,' Miss Hooper described it, her mouth twisted up in a smile that wasn't very happy at all.

 

     Then she showed me loads of different mushrooms that were either poisonous or safe, but I was getting bored and all the mushrooms looked exactly alike. She promised to bring me other fruits and vegetable to study so I can know what’s okay for me and what isn’t. There are loads of things for me to learn about life outside, she said. I didn't tell her that it wouldn't matter how much I learned about life outside, because Dr Frankland said I might be a teenager by the time I can leave, or even an adult. That's a long time from now, and maybe he won't even by alive by then, and if he's not then I don't know if anybody would ever decide to let me out. 

But it's not as bad as it might be. I try to not think about leaving or what it might be like. After I'd been in the lab for half a year they brought me to this room. It's awfully big. They built it specially for me. It's almost three times the size of the cottage in Sussex we rented on holiday, the cottage by the oaktree and beehives when I was five. I remember that cottage, mostly because I remember almost everything, and also because we had it for nearly a whole summer and there weren't any cases Papa had to leave for or sick people at the surgery Daddy had to take care of – it was just us and a little town and the bees. Papa got so much honey from the hives that Daddy said we could have filled the Channel with it. I liked it in tea and I liked having warm spoonfuls of it when my throat hurt and I liked sometimes just eating it from a jar with my finger, even though I wasn't supposed to do. That summer Daddy taught me to cycle and Papa taught me about how bees communicate and also he started teaching me the violin. I wasn't very good at it but Papa didn't mind. He said he hadn't been very good until he was eleven and started to be more  _dextrous_. I used to think that I'd try to be dextrous by the time I was ten to make Papa impressed, but I'm ten now and I haven't even seen a violin since everyone got ill.   
  
  
    My room here is probably bigger than any cottage, I think. Sometimes I’ll run from one side to the other, touching off at the glass in the front and sprinting to the wall in the back and timing myself in my head, and I always completely lose my breath. I like doing that. Sometimes when I run my ribs start pressing and my stomach aches like it’s being cut open again and then I have to sit down and rest because I can’t run anymore. I don't know if I'm meant to feel that way when I'm tired or if it's because they've probably taken parts out of me. There’s a football net in my room, too, and loads of those soft squishy balls small children play with, and they don’t even touch the ceiling unless I throw them very high very hard when I'm standing my bed. I also have books and encyclopaedias, proper full sets with leather bindings and everything, and I draw pictures of my family and Miss Hooper and Dr Frankland and different sorts of molecules and dead bodies in different kinds of decomposition. Because I don’t have a telly any longer I also spend a lot of time writing in my notebook. Already a whole hour’s gone by. When I write down my thoughts, I forget about everything else. Daddy said that happened to him sometimes, when he wrote about Papa and me.

 

     I have decided for certain that I will be a doctor one day. I’m going to help make people better.

 

 

                    23 December

 

      I haven’t written my thoughts down for ages, because even though loads has happened it all sort of mushed together in my head. And also I accidentally spilled water on my old notebook, so I had to rip out all the pages and lay them down to dry and then copy everything down in a new notebook Miss Hooper brought me, and some of the words smeared off and I couldn’t see them properly, so I had to write them again from memory. But my memory's almost as good as Papa's when I want it to be, so I know I didn't leave anything out. But that much writing made me not want to write again for a while, so I just put the notebook under my pillow with Daddy’s book for a while.

 

     And then I was distracted, because something happened outside of my room but nobody would tell me for ages. The next time Miss Hooper came she told me that Anderson was ill. At first I felt awful, even though Anderson was rude and could be mean sometimes, because I thought I’d made him sick. But Miss Hooper said that he couldn’t have gotten Virus-H from me because he hadn’t gone to my room for months and he hadn’t even been in for weeks. She said something about pubs but stopped. Then she started talking about Anderson coming in with red eyes, and how Dr Frankland tried to send him away because it meant Anderson was a hazard like my room is now, and Anderson had gotten angry. Then Miss Hooper stopped talking again.

 

     I haven’t seen Anderson even once since and nobody talks about him, so I suppose that means he’s dead. And I think maybe I should feel more sad about that, but it was already weeks ago, and the reason I started writing again is because I’m so excited that yesterday I ran back and forth in my room three times. It’s Christmas in two days and I _love_ Christmas. It always makes me think good thoughts and I don’t have many of those lately.

 

 

                     25 December

 

     Christmas was _brilliant!_   Miss Hooper baked biscuits and brought me food she’d heated up and some more bits from her garden. I could deduce that mostly everything except the biscuits and the cassava were from tins, just what it always is, but it still tasted loads better than my usual food. I haven’t had biscuits in ages. Because of the masks Miss Hooper had to eat her food before she cam in, but she sat and watched me eat after she put my present with the others on my bed. Sally came in, too, and even though she hadn’t gotten me any presents she surprised me with a hug. She’s never hugged me before. I think she was sad about Anderson, a bit, so I hugged her too.

 

     Dr Frankland came in for a little bit at the end, and he gave me a hug also but said he couldn’t stay because he was busy. He didn’t wrap the magnifying glass he gave me, but I wasn’t bothered so much, because it was just like the one Papa used to use and I loved that. Dr Frankland even ruffled my hair with his huge suit glove, just like Mary used to and and Miss Hooper does now, and that made me feel warm inside.

 

      Dr Frankland hardly comes in to see me anymore. He’s missing bits and patches of his hair now. I asked why his hair was missing in spots and he said that’s what happens when your mind is overtired. But that didn’t make sense because Papa used his mind loads and his hair was never missing. 

 

     I liked having everyone come in to my room. Before, in the beginning, almost no one ever came in, not even Miss Hooper. They made her sit on a chair outside the glass and use the intercom for my lessons. It’s happier when everyone’s inside.

 

     I remember how Christmases used to be, with my whole family, even Uncle Mycroft, around the table in the kitchen, and Daddy and I put fairy lights everywhere, and got Christmas crackers and silly hats and we always made Papa wear one and he always pretended to grumble but secretly liked it. Papa would always wrap my presents in funny ways so I couldn't deduce what was in them, and Uncle Mycroft would give me a present that wasn't really a thing like _trust funds_ , and Mrs Hudson would make biscuits that were meant to be shaped like Christmassy things but always looked like splodges, and Papa and Daddy would snog under mistletoe Aunt Harry put up and she would say it was sweet and I would say it was gross. I told Miss Hooper about our Christmases, because they were all happy stories. She told me she had gone to a Christmas party at my old flat once, before I was even born, which I didn’t know. She said she came to see me today, and Sally and Dr Frankland came too, because we’re being each other’s family now, so we aren't alone. 

 

     I’ve never thought about it like that before.

 

 

                    30 December

 

      Nobody will tell me anything, not even Miss Hooper, but I think Dr Frankland might have gotten ill. I haven't seen him for five days. It's quiet now. I wish it were Christmas again.

 

 

                    23 January

 

      Daddy never told me something I’ve learned from my notebook. If I’m not in the proper mood or thinking in a certain way, then writing down my thoughts is hard. Loads happened in the days I’ve missed. 

 

     The mean doctor is gone, and I’m _glad_. He wasn’t like Dr Frankland one bit. I could hardly believe he was a real doctor, because when I saw him take the hazmat suit off through my glass his clothes were always filthy and ragged. And he wasn’t ever nice to me – he wouldn’t answer any of my questions at all, and he wouldn’t ever look in my eyes. He hit me once with his glove, on my cheek for almost nothing. His glove hurt me so badly my cheek turned blue and purple. He wouldn’t say sorry, and I wouldn’t cry, because I knew he wanted me to do.

 

     And then when he hooked me up to the IV bags he took so much blood from me I couldn’t even stand up. I was frightened that he might operate on me. I kept thinking bad thoughts and I had nightmares about him taking all the parts out of me until there wasn't anything left of me at all.

 

     Miss Hooper didn’t come in for nearly a week. Nobody would say where she was. I had nightmares where she’d gotten ill with my virus like Mary did. When she finally did come in, I hugged her so hard she said I might rupture her suit, and then when I wasn't crying anymore I told her about the doctor taking too much blood. She got angrier than I'd ever seen her. That was how I found out why she hadn't been in for so long – he wouldn't  _let_ her in. Miss Hooper said he tried to bar her from coming, and that was her word, _bar_ , like a prison. 

 

     The new doctor and Miss Hooper did not like each other at all, even though I think they might have both known the same person once, because sometimes when I could see them outside of my glass, screaming back and forth at each other and waving their hands about, even though I couldn’t hear their mouths seemed to make the world _Jim_ a lot. And Papa’s name, too.

 

     I was afraid that Dr Moran would send Miss Hooper away forever. But yesterday she told me that he’s leaving! I told her I was glad, because I had worried he would try to take Dr Frankland’s place. It was only a little bit of a lie, even though I had worried about that as well as everything else, but I didn’t want Miss Hooper to feel upset about how awful and scared I’d been feeling. 

     No, she told me, nobody is trying to take Dr Frankland’s place. She said Dr Moran flew here to study me in person because he is one of the doctors Dr Frankland used to send my blood off to, and because he hadn’t liked some things my papa did, and didn’t like me either because of that. I asked Miss Hooper why he would come out and study me if he didn’t like me or Papa, and she sighed and said maybe he wanted to know why I was special with Virus-H. I don’t know if I believe her or not.

 

     Miss Hooper also told me Dr Moran was already quite sick when he got here, and he started feeling even worse, so he had to leave. In here is supposed to be sterile, and he was making it not, the way Anderson had done. Seeing me was Dr Moran’s last wish, Miss Hooper said. But she didn’t seem very happy when she said it. So I don’t think it was a nice wish, not the kind children in hospital used to get.

 

      I asked her if he went back to London to his family, and Miss Hooper said no, and then stopped and pressed her lips together. Then she said in a careful voice, 'I really don't think he has a family, Hamish. And even so, no one can get into London anymore. The government's closed the borders.' I didn’t really understand that, but I didn’t want to ask.

 

     Miss Hooper seemed awfully tired from all the talking. She said she’d decided to move inside, like Sally had done, to make sure they were taking proper care of me. I was so happy. She said she misses Toby and her garden but that she had missed me more, when she wasn’t here. That made me feel good. I missed her too.

 

     The whole place has been falling to pieces, Miss Hooper said. She said I do a good job of keeping my room tidy – and I do, because I have my own mop and my own bucket and my own bins – but that the corridors have gotten filthy. Which is true, because sometimes I can see water dribbling down the walls outside of my glass, loads of water, and it puddles all over the floor. I can tell the water is dirty because there are so many different colours floating on the top, and that’s something Papa was going to teach me, the chemical and physical properties of water and other sorts of liquid. But then he had the case in Cardiff. Papa said it’s oil from cars and things that makes water look that way, but I don’t know why it looks that way indoors. Miss Hooper said that the water smells dreadful, too. 

 

     ‘It’s horrible, it’s just horrible – if they’re going to keep you in here, they’d bloody well better take care of you,’ Miss Hooper said. That was when I knew she was angry, because she doesn’t ever swear.

 

     I’m not sure why I did, but I told her about the time that Anderson, before he died, obviously, came late at night and started smashing his fist on my intercom. I had been asleep and nobody else was around because it was late, half one. Anderson was talking too loudly like Papa told me people did when they’re drunk. Anderson was making an awful face at me through the glass, banging on it with his other fist. I had never seen him look so mean. I was scared he would try to come into my room but then I remembered he couldn’t because he didn’t have a hazmat suit. But I can't make myself forget what he said to me –  _don't know why they haven't put you down like a dog in a shelter, you little freak_ – no matter how much I want to forget it.

     I work hard to never think about that night, because it gives me nightmares. I was so little when it happened, barely eight. Sometimes I think I might have only dreamed it, because the next time Anderson came, he acted normal. He was stupid, of course, and mean, but he never said anything like that again.

 

     Miss Hooper didn’t even sound surprised when I told her what Anderson had said about putting me to sleep, just a little bit sad. ‘It’s true, Hamish,’ she told me, ‘there were some people outside, for a long while, who didn’t think we ought to take care of you. They’re gone now, love, I promise you that.’

 

     I hadn’t known about that before. Even when I still had my programmes, I hadn’t known that.

 

     A long time ago, I can remember, when I was very little and had to stay in hospital because my tonsils had to come out, there was one night I needed to stay alone because Papa had a case with some bad people and needed Daddy to go with him. Daddy didn't want Papa to go alone but he also didn't want to leave  _me_ alone in the hospital he didn't like – which was sort of silly, because Daddy was a doctor before he was a writer and my dad. ‘They won’t take proper care of him,’ I heard him tell my papa, but they didn’t know I heard. ‘They won't understand him, he's too much like you.' But I had to stay alone anyway, because Papa knew I would be fine and that Daddy needed to come to make sure the bad people didn't hurt anyone. So I was by myself in the hospital all night long and I could hardly sleep because of what I wasn't meant to have heard. I was scared that the people in the bad hospital had maybe taken the wrong parts out of my throat, or put something else in, because they didn't understand. It was silly, but I was little. I didn't know I'd really need to be scared of that later. 

 

    Nothing bad happened to me in hospital, though, and then Daddy and Papa were there the next day and Daddy brought ice creams and Papa brought in an old case file and we got to read the whole thing and all about the murders together while Daddy sorted out my papers and packed us all up, because I got to come home that morning. That made the night along worth it.

 

     So I think I’m almost glad I hadn’t known people didn’t used to want Dr Frankland and Miss Hooper and everyone to take care of me, because it would have made me worry and I wouldn’t have had case files or ice creams or Papa or Daddy to make me stop, and I can't go home anyway. Even if I was better, I don't think I could get into London now. But Miss Hooper said that the people who didn’t want me here are gone. Probably they just stopped thinking about me, like what Mary said ages back about people not thinking about BBC anymore.

 

     The lights are off almost every other day now. And always for hours and hours – I’ve started timing them in my head when I’m terribly bored. There’s hardly anything else to do when it goes dark because I can’t see to read or write or draw at all. I'm wearing all my extra clothes mostly every day, even under my duvet in bed, because it's so awfully cold in here. And I think they must really miss Anderson, because the dirty coloured water is puddling all across the floor outside my glass now and nobody’s gone to clean it up.

 

 

                    28 January

 

     Sally hasn’t been in for ages. Miss Hooper won’t tell me, but I don’t think Sally’s coming back. And I’m glad Dr Moran’s gone but now I only ever see Miss Hooper. I don't know if anyone else is in. Miss Hooper's here every day, now. Sometimes we just talk, or she'll read to me from Daddy's book while I draw or climb my rope or run around. Sometimes we play games where she'll tell me about a dead body she cut up long ago and I'll have to deduce how it died. I've gotten all but the awfully hard ones, like one body that had absolutely nothing wrong with it except for a tiny pinprick on the wrist where a bad man had gotten poison into the old woman’s blood.   
  
  
     Our lessons now are mostly just about safe plants and water and things, though. It gets very boring, but Miss Hooper really does want to tell me about them, because we review almost every day, so I don't want to tell her that I don't like it. I've had to memorise loads of different sorts of mushrooms and how to make fires and how to get the germs out of water. Miss Hooper still tries to make our lessons fun like she always has done, though. Yesterday she taught me how I would escape if I’d been buried alive in a coffin, and she had me act out the entire thing under my bed, pulling the shirt over my head and kicking at the mattress and everything. We both laughed until our chests ached. I like that ache more than I like the running ache.

 

 

                    14 February

 

     1-8-9-5-2-5-9   1-8-9-5-2-5-9   1-8-9-5-2-5-9

 

     I remembered the numbers, of course. I have an excellent memory, like Papa, but even so I’ve been saying them over and over in my head so I can’t possibly forget, and I’ve written them down in the exact proper order to be entirely sure. I know them without looking now, and know them backwards, too. 9-5-2-5-9-8-1.

 

     Except I ought to start at the beginning. Yesterday Miss Hooper didn’t bring me anything to eat at all, the entire day. This morning she came with a huge bowl of porridge and told me she was so very sorry. She said she’d had to look for a long while to find that food, and it made her very tired. The porridge was cold and awfully lumpy, but I didn’t say anything. I just ate. She watched me eat, like she was hungry too. We didn’t talk about anything today or play any games. Miss Hooper just kept looking sad and a bit grey. She said she had been in bed all day yesterday because she was awfully tired, and she was so very very sorry that she forgot to feed me. It was hard for me to hear her when she spoke through her hazmat suit today. Her mask had gone crooked, so the microphone didn’t sit in front of her mouth like it ought to do.

 

     Earlier I’d moved the pillow I keep over Daddy’s book and this notebook to fetch Daddy’s book, because reading made me feel less hungry. Miss Hooper saw my notebook and asked if she could read through it. I said she could. She looked at every page, beginning to end. She said she loved the part where I said she was my best friend. Well, she is! Her face-mask was misting up, so I couldn’t see her eyes and I couldn’t tell whether she was smiling. I really think she didn’t put her suit on properly today.

     When she put down my notebook, Miss Hooper told me to pay especially close attention to her and repeat the numbers she told me and remember them _exactly_ because they were very very important, and they were 1-8-9-5-2-9-5. 

 

     I asked what the numbers meant, and she told me they were the security code for my door. She said she wanted to give the code to me because my buzzer didn’t work any longer, and I might need to leave my room if she overslept and couldn’t come to bring me food. She told me I could use the same code on the lift, and that the kitchen was on the third storey. There wouldn’t be anyone there, she said, but I could look through the shelves, the top ones up high, to see if there was any food. If not, she said I should take the stairs down to the first storey and find the red EXIT sign to go outside. _Outside!_ She said the lift doesn’t go to the first storey any longer.

 

     Then I was scared, properly scared, but she ruffled my hair just like always and smiled at me. She said she was certain there was plenty of food outside.

 

     ‘But am I allowed?’ I asked her. ‘What if I make people ill?’

 

     ‘You worry too much, Ham,’ Miss Hooper said. ‘You're the only thing that matters now.’

 

     Except, I’ve been thinking for a long while, and I think maybe Miss Hooper doesn’t actually want me to go outside. She can’t have done, can she? Miss Hooper must be awfully tired to tell me to do something like that. Maybe she got fever and that’s why she told me how to get out of my room, but thinking about that makes me feel ill in my stomach and I wish I didn’t just write it down. But fever does do that, Miss Hudson said so many silly things when she had the fever, and my daddy, too. My daddy kept calling me names I didn’t recognise, and talking about miracles, and he always sounded so sad for no reason, and he cried all over his pillow and I never knew why. I thought about it after I came here and thinking of Daddy and Papa didn’t make my chest hurt anymore, and I think maybe the names were people in Daddy’s army, where he used to be a soldier. He had been a doctor soldier, and I think some of the names he called me were people who died when he was trying to make them better.

 

     Papa didn’t say anything at all when he was sick. He stared at nothing and died very fast. He never said a word.

 

     I wish I could find Miss Hooper and give her something to drink. People get awfully thirsty when they have fever, which I know, because it’s a fact. But I can’t go to her because I don’t know where she is, and also I don’t know where Dr Frankland kept the hot suits. What if I went to her and she wasn’t wearing hers and I made her ill? What if she’s already ill and I made her worse?

 

     Maybe the porridge was the only thing left in the whole kitchen and now I’ve eaten it all. I hope not. But I think maybe it is because I know Miss Hooper would have brought me food if she could have found it. I know she would have done because she’s always asking me if I have enough to eat. 

 

     I’m already hungry again.

 

     1-8-9-5-2-5-9

     1-8-9-5-2-5-9

 

 

                    15 February

 

     I am writing in the dark. I don’t want to, but I have to. The lights have gone off. I tried to open my lock but the numbers didn’t work because of the lights being off. I don’t know where Miss Hooper has gone. I’m trying not to cry.  
  
  
     It's so cold I can hardly hold the pencil properly. I'm wearing all my socks and Daddy's cosy jumper, even though now it smells horrible and the sleeves are unravelling, because in my sleep I've started sucking my sleeves again like I did when I was little. 

 

     What if the lights don’t ever come back on?

 

 

                    16 February

 

     There’s loads I have to say but I’ve got a headache from being hungry. When the lights came back on, I put in the code (1-8-9-5-2-5-9, 1-8-9-5-2-5-9) and went out into the corridor like Miss Hooper told me, and my socks and trouser legs were soaked in the dirty water. I used the numbers to get the lift to work, which it did after some creaking and shaking and an awful moment where I thought I'd be stuck inside, and then I went into the kitchen on the third storey like she told me to do. I wanted to go in as quickly as I could and find some jam or some biscuits or even a tin of beans I could open because Miss Hooper left me a tin opener at Christmas.

 

     But there isn’t any food in the kitchen. None at all. There are empty tins and wrappers on the floor and even a dead rat but I looked on every shelf and in every cabinet and even in the bins and I couldn’t find anything to eat at all. I wanted to cry but my head already hurt so badly. 

 

     The sun was shining so _so_ bright from the window. I had practically forgotten how the sun looks. When I went to the window I could see moors everywhere, going on and on and cutting into the sky, and there was so much green and brown and blue that my eyes started hurting. But right below were some white buildings like this one with windows all smashed in and huge fences broken down in places and some asphalt paths that all led out to one thin road that needled out through the moors, getting smaller and smaller as it just went on. The asphalt looked as though there were diamonds on it but I realised it was only loads of broken glass. I could only see one car anywhere and I thought perhaps it was Miss Hooper’s. Except Miss Hooper wouldn’t have left her car looking that way, scraped up on the sides and with two smushed tyres. There was oil on the puddles there, too. I knew it was oil because it made so many colours swirl when the water caught the sunlight.

 

     I don’t think anybody’s in today. It looks empty everywhere. So I went back into my room and went under my bed to think and think and think. I thought very carefully and very thoroughly down there, and I thought of a plan. It's not brilliant, but it's the only one I have.

 

     I have to go now. Miss Hooper, I’ve written this for you – or for anybody who comes looking for me. Anybody who does will find my notebook because I’m going to leave it right on top of my duvet, so it’ll be obvious. I’m putting Daddy’s book beside it because perhaps whoever finds the notebook won’t have read it and will want to understand who Papa and Daddy and I used to be. I’m very sorry I had to leave in such a hurry. I'm sorry I left when I'm not supposed to.

 

      I didn’t want to go outside, I promise I didn’t, but I have to because otherwise I'm not going to have anything to eat at all. I'll leave my door open so I won't be locked out, even if the lights go out and don't come back on. There has to be food in the other buildings, and Miss Hooper will probably be back soon. And maybe there will be mushrooms or other plants I can eat from the moor and I'll know the good ones from the bad ones because Miss Hooper told me so. And if somebody tries to bury me alive I'll know how to escape because she told me how.

 

     Miss Hooper, I promise I'll come right back so you can find me. If I find your house and Toby, I'll bring him with me so you don't have to miss him, or me, or anything. And if anybody sees me and I get in trouble I'll tell them there wasn't anything to eat. Which is the truth, so I won't get in trouble. Not if I'm telling the truth.   
  
  
    Whoever is reading this, Miss Hooper or anybody at all, please don't worry. I promise I'll tell everybody I see to please  _please_ not come close to me. I know how much everyone has worried that I would make them sick.


End file.
